Hillside Theatre
90-29 Sutphin Boulevard,
Jamaica,
NY
11435
90-29 Sutphin Boulevard,
Jamaica,
NY
11435
7 people
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Showing 76 - 100 of 125 comments
Theaterat, Mays also had a store at 169th St. & Jamaica Ave. through the early- to mid ‘70s, at least. (Gertz, between 163rd & NY Blvd., once featured a performance by folksingers Bud & Travis in their record department summer of '63.) The old shopping area, quite changed in these modern times, could boast several good theaters between Sutphin Blvd. & 165th St: Hillside, Merrick, RKO Alden and the Valencia. Any others I may have missed?
Only paid one visit to the Hillside back in August, 1964, for “A Hard Day’s Night.” Snagged a double-disc DVD of it this week, too.
Warren- I quess that you pretty much have nailed the boundaries of downtown Jamaica. My mother remembers Goodwins vividly. It kind of resembled Mays in downtown Brooklyn. How about Macy`s? Remember that? We used to refer to it as “the department store from the Twilight Zone”.
Here’s the link to the IMDb page for “First Men in The Moon”. One can see for one’s self that the release date in the USA was (Friday) November 20, 1964. Yes, I remember Gertz Dept. Store in Jamaica. Also Goodwin’s.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058100/
Remember going to the Hillside in the summer of
64 with my cousin Patricia{who lived not too far away} to see the Beatles in their first{unfortunately, not their last} movie "A Hard Days Night".Cant say I liked the movie, but the theater was fairly clean and well kept. Im not sure if Loews ran it at the time, but it DID resemble a Loews theater due to the first class design elements that went into it. A few months later, I visited it again with my father and younger brother to see "First Men in The Moon"- a British made Sci-Fi with Ray Harryhausen FX. I remember it was probably around Thanksgiving because my mother and aunt went shopping at Gertz dept store. Remember that? Anyway, this area was never really too safe at night. It was also somewhat transient because it was near the LIRRs main station where most commuters had to transfer to other trains for their trip home to Long Island.Even though that was bad enough {for the time} the area went completely to hell in the early 70s when drugs, street crime, and urban decay made its appearence. This pretty much “finished off” Jamaica like so many other “downtown” areas across the USA, but slowly it is turning itself around. The long closed theaters remain a mute testiment to this once decent area.You are all right…I sit corrected! Hillside Ave. ran parallel to Jamacia Avenue and the Court House was on Supthin. I also remember McGinnis’s restaurant on Supthin next to or near a chinese restaurant. Another memory Gertz’s Department store. Montgomery Wards. The old coffee shop on the west side of Supthin going toward the LIRR station. Sheffield' dairy. Krugs bakery. All surrounding the Hillside theater. Mary Immaculate Hospital. Many memories!
Warren’s right. The Courthouse is/was located between 88th and 89th on Sutphin. 89th Avenue, as late as the mid-80s (the last time I saw it), was an interesting street because it was still paved in the (original?) cobblestones.
Thanks, leroyelliston, for posting your memories of the Hillside. I would think that the Queens County Courthouse had entrances on both Sutphin Boulevard and Hillside Avenue.
Have you clicked on the links I posted three years ago to images of the Sutphin Blvd el station on nycsubway.org that show the Hillside in the background ? I’m rather pleased with, and proud of, the detective work that Erwin M and I did to figure out that one image must have been right after the February 4, 1961 blizzard.
I believe “Anchors Aweigh” also starred Kathryn Grayson as the female lead. It can be checked on the IMDb :
www.imdb.com
Warren,
Here I am again! After making comments about the Valencia, Colonial, Astor and Victoria theaters I sincerely forgot about the Hillside. Before moving to Brooklyn we lived in the Grove Apartments on the next block behind the Hillside. It was always a treat to go to the Valencia, but seeing that the Hillside was so close we patronized the Hillside most of the time. Also frequented the old Savoy. I remember the stage shows that would come by every now and then. The first movie I ever saw in vivid technicolor was “Anchors Aweigh” with Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra. That was a real treat for young eyes. The Hillside was a nice theater!
Seeing that we lived just behind the Hillside we would always use the tall fire escapes as a play ground until we were chased. Fun times! A great deal of innocence and simple fun. The big County Court House was just down the road on Hillside Avenue. That lawn was used also as a play area. Funny stories about what transpired there. Great times! I think I’m getting addicted to this website.
This isn’t the old Hillside Theater burning is it? It for some reason looked like a theater to me, but am not sure. This fire is in a building on Sutphin Blvd:
http://stevespak.com/fires/queens/99-55-9820.html
Thanks, BklynJim !
Here’s a NYC transit website you can live in for a bit:
www.subwaywebnews.com
Great archives!
Wow ! Que sera sera ! Doris Mae Kapplehoff from someplace in Ohio !
I’m curious where that old abandoned IRT station platform near Canal Street is. I used to be heavily into the nycsubway.org website. Bway was, too, and probably still is.
Yeah, Willard and Ben live, not to mention the 1984 film, “C.H.U.D.” (Cannabilistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers) partly filmed in and around the Chambers St. station.
I remember those late dates from my single days, and those nearly deserted platforms and once an hour trains, in “The After Hours”.
LMAO – Debbie was the 1963 incarnation of Doris Day!
You certainly nailed the Chambers St. station. I had that one in mind. There’s another in lower Manhattan – I’ll have to check a transit map somewhere near Canal St. or so – where you connect with the line you want by passing through an old abandoned IRT station platform. If you wait for a train there, you’ll die waiting. This one pops up occassionally in my “NY Nightmares Department.”
Speaking of Canal St., I was returning from a late date (4-5 A.M.) in my single days, only to encounter a rat almost the size of a cat at the end of the corridor. I made a lound sound by jumping (with boots on), and the rat turned and skittered down a round drain pipe at the base of the wall. Today’s rats are totally unintimidated by the comings and goings of those underground metal behemoths. Watched them with a curious eye a few months ago at Penn Station/34th St. of the IND A train. They fear no one at all. Willard and Ben live!
“If Debbie had lived in the park or on the parkway, we would’ve frozen off a few parts of our joint anatomy in February!”
Yes, perhaps those very parts that were stimulated most pleasurably !
Sadly, all too many people in NYC now do live in boxes on the street, and in freezing weather, too !
“I think I know of a few NYC subway stations that could also creep us all out.”
It was “Hobbs End” station in the film.
Creep us out ?
Like Chambers Street in lower Manhattan. It always reminds me of Piranesi’s etchings of huge, ancient, fantastic-looking ruins.
Yep. North, it ‘tis. Funny – I always referred to any residental areas as “below.” If Debbie had lived in the park or on the parkway, we would’ve frozen off a few parts of our joint anatomy in February!
The ‘67 color version was downright eerie – grasshoppers that could fly interstellar craft, and then land them in the London tubes. I think I know of a few NYC subway stations that could also creep us all out.
BklynJim, thanks for your answer on where you were, 2/9/64. I was at home with my parents watching the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. Never knew that about Canadian EMI vs. US Capitol LP.
83rd St. a block below Myrtle ? You must mean north of Myrtle, because Forest Park and Jackie Robinson Pkwy are south of Myrtle at 83rd St.
My first time to Film Forum in NYC, mid-August 1987, I badly needed some escape, so I saw their triple feature of “Quatermass”, the rarely seen “Quatermass 2”, and 1967’s “Five Million Years To Earth”, about that Martian spaceship in the London tube station.
My favorite line from “Quatermass 2” was :
“Those pipes are filled with human pulp !”
2-9-64: I was firmly planted on the sofa of my college girlfriend’s house on 83rd St. in Glendale, a block below Myrtle. Nothing would have prevented Debbie and me from watching Old Stoneface and the Beatles that night. Those became some pretty exciting times.
The only downer, record-wise, was U.S. Capitol. The EMI Canadian LP had 16 tracks for “Meet the Beatles,” whereas we got 12. Subsequent American albums had 11, so Capitol could later turn around and release a “brand new” Beatles LP just for us. I swear they took lessons from Dick Clark’s School For Shills.
P.S.: I really did like Brian Donleavy and the astronaut dude with the cactus growing out of his hand in “The Creeping Unknown.” What surprises me is that our local theater, the Peerless, never booked the sequel (“Enemy From Space” or “Quatermass 2”) in ‘57, the very next year! Finally got it on DVD. Not shabby at all.
Thanks for posting this anecdote, BrooklynJim. I think the Beatles exploding onto the American scene in early 1964 did much to lift the nation from the doldrums of JFK’s assassination.
As for learning Beatles songs fast enough to impress the coed womenfolk : I’m reminded of the film “Il Postino”, in which the fisherman turned postman wants to become a poet, to woo and win the local beauty, and the fact that you may have been inspired to impress pretty coeds with Beatles songs by all the screaming teenage girls seen in the film
Where were YOU when the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show, 8-9 p.m. Sunday February 9, 1964 ?
I know what you mean about “A Hard Day’s Night” being a level above “The Quatermass Experiment” (or “The Creeping Unknown”, as I first saw it titled on Chiller Theater, Saturday WPIX Channel 11, 7:30 to 9:00 p.m.)
Believe it or don’t, despite the Hillside’s proximity to the el and Jamaica (pre-mall) shopping center, and to the LIRR depot, I only attended ONE single flick there in the spring of ‘64 – but it was a gem and a lalapalooza!
To put the era in context, Nov. 22, 1963 forced us kids to experience a presidential assassination. The loss of JFK put the country in a deep gloomy funk. In retrospect, it appeared as if four loveable moptops from Liverpool and their music helped take us teens out of the trauma of 11/63.
By the following spring, all of us would-be wanna-be rock stars cum guitar players at SJU (also known as the “Hillcrest-Utopia Parkway Country Club”) couldn’t learn Beatles songs fast enough to impress the coed womenfolk. And their latest album released on United Artists records was the soundtrack of “A Hard Day’s Night.” We had all died and gone to music heaven!
The movie was playing at the Hillside, the only convenient theater to the University, so I cut a boring afternoon Philosophy class and scooted down to Sutphin and Jamaica to see it. I was surprised that, considering the group’s popularity in England and Germany for at least two prior years, that no one who financed the picture could spring for anything other than B&W (but more like sepia-tone. At least “Help!” the following year was in color.)
Regardless, I loved the movie. Loved the songs. Loved the Fab Four. Loved Wilfred Brambley as Paul’s grandpa, “a clean old man.” This was the Brit version of the Marx Bros. gone amuck, and took that country’s films to a level far exceeding “The Creeping Unknown” (or “The Quatermas Experiment” overseas).
But I was destined never to be within the Hillside’s comfortable surroundings again… (???)
In Times Square, the “big ones” were at Minksy’s!
Maybe the “big ones” referred to the strippers that performed there, or is that only a happy coincidence?
When this Academy Award double bill played at the Hillside it was no longer a Loew's
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Under the “LOEW’S HILLSIDE” sign was splashed: “The BIG ones come to Loew’s Hillside”. I remember seeing it whilst taking the “J” train to B'klyn Poly during the mid Sixties.
Who or what the “big ones” were is anybody’s guess. This Loew’s was certainly off Jamaica Ave. “theater alley” path.
In 1963 the Hillside was part of this MGM Showcase
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How sad, that such a large and once-beautiful theater went to seed and to waste like that. But at least live burlesque shows and plays were tried, in addition to movies, before the Hillside closed forever as a theater.